City: Portland, ME

Category: Restaurants

Telephone: (207) 761-4446

Address: 72 Commercial St.

Description: Always a hopping joint, this Irish place enjoys good word of mouth for its brews, bands, bonhomie, and Emerald Isle-inspired fare. Yet somehow it doesn’t seem quite so special—the hometown pub spirit is diminished—when you find out it’s part of a chain with pubs in Providence, Burlington, and as far south as North Carolina. You might begin with some tasty Irish potato leek soup, which comes with brown bread and Guinness butter, then move onto the Linguine Galway, which combines shrimp, mussels, tomatoes and white wine with spices on a bed of linguine; Dublin Fisherman’s Stew, which combines lobster, mussels, and fresh fish in a light seafood broth with garlic, spinach, and fennel (yes, that’s Maine lobster). Fun stuff, though a franchise, and at least here on the Portland waterfront on a foggy day, you could imagine you were in County Cork.